Busy Living & Animals for Africa Is Born

So, it's been six months, one-half year, since I posted to this blog.  I've been busy living.  Really!

In May, I traveled to Malawi, Africa with VoiceFlame Writers International voiceflamewriters.org.  We wrote with women, led an afternoon of writing with around 400 secondary school girls in Tukumbo and did much more.  The leaders of VFWI trained Malawi women to lead their own writing groups using the Amherst Writers & Artists method  www.amherstwriters.com.

In June, I took the handwritten words from 400 young women from Tukumbo Girls Secondary School into a document to celebrate their voices!

In July, there was a trip east to help my son move from Knoxville, TN to the eastern shore of Maryland where he will be pursuing graduate studies.

At the beginning of August, I returned to Peru for the wedding of my daughter and the trek to Machu Picchu.  At the end of August, I went off the grid at Channel Rock, 140 acres of coastal retreat and conservancy, www.channelrock.ca on Cortes Island, B.C., Canada.

In Seattle, during the sunny months, we have more visitors than we ever had in North Dakota.  Many take cruises from Seattle to Alaska.  When they're in Seattle I love joining them as they explore Rainier Mountain, Snoqualmie Falls, taking a ferry ride to Bainbridge Island, Pike Place Market, the Seattle Center, Lake Union, Ride the Ducks....  Makes me feel like I'm on vacation.

In September, I started a new teaching position as a preschool teacher in a community college parent cooperative preschool.  Great fun and work!

It is October.  The days are growing shorter and cooler. The squirrels are gathering their nuts.  I am ready to write the rhythms of my life, to harvest the stories that have been growing-stories to warm as the days grow colder.

Today the most exciting story is the birth announcement of Animals for Africa www.animalsforafrica.org, the soul child of Robbyn Alexander, a woman who I traveled to Malawi with.  Hand-made animals, "tangible gifts of love" and monetary donations support a child's village or orphanage to provide for basic needs of food clothing and shelter.

This year has been abundantly full.  I am grateful for the people and places that have touched my life.

A Wet Kiss from God?

An Astronomical Question

What

Would

Happen if God leaned down

And gave you a full wet

Kiss?

Hafiz Poem c. 1320 to 1389, a mystic Sufi poet from Persia 

Translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Peru and the Country of Love

Somewhere between Urubamba and Ollantaytambo in the Sacred Valley of Peru, our taxi driver decided we needed a break, so my daughter, her fiancé and I tasted canchita (popcorn), other corn products including corn beverages which I didn't enjoy as much as my daily Pisco Sour(s).  After a few sips at the roadside joint, the place where locals come for "Happy Hour," I really needed a bathroom break.  This photo was taken from an outhouse.   I wasn't leaning out of a window.  There wasn't one, just an opening in the graffiti-less clay.  Next to the outhouse there was a lean-to of sorts, chicken wire topped with a tin roof.  Not a chicken coop, it was filled with corn cobs, more like a grain bin.  As I relieved myself, several chickens that looked like Rhode Island Reds to me, pecked at the door.  If I was a dog, cow, donkey, or chicken I would want to live in Peru.  No cage.  No fence.

I didn't plan to travel to Peru this year, but when my daughter and her fiancé asked me to come help prepare for their August wedding, I said, "Yes!"  Use your imagination, but in that place where I took care of basic needs, I saw a metaphor between that particular outhouse and marriages in general.  My eyes were filled with wet gratitude for being able to  pee in an outhouse surrounded by lovely creatures and sights.  The loveliest was my daughter and her fiancé, witnessing their tender new love. I was in Peru for the first time, thirty-four years into the country of my marriage.  My daughter's fiancé was in the country where he was born and raised.  My daughter was in two new countries.  The country of love, if it's love, always brings you home.

Breathe!

Bella mattina! In June, 2010, I took this photo of Lake Como  looking out the bedroom window of Italy's historic Menaggio Castello Panoramica after a cup of coffee in bed.  My family was celebrating the last of our three children's college graduations which started with a visit to Lausanne, Switzerland where our oldest daughter and her husband live.  Six of us squished into a five passenger car to drive from Switzerland to Menaggio.  The sights, tastes and time together as a family was breathtaking and giving.

It seems I've been on a trip for fifty-three years.  I was born in Cleveland, Ohio.  My family moved to southern California when I was an infant, the fifth of nine children.  Since seventh grade I have resided in Kansas, North Dakota, Nebraska, and Missouri.  Now, I call Seattle, Washington home.

Just being at the beach, most any beach or lovely water location, brings me a peace that passes all understanding.  The rhythmic waves, the salty wetness, the gritty sand, invite me to oneness for brief moments before the fishy seaweed disturbs my reverie, and I find myself overlooking the sea and its gifts, returning to my jellyfish mind and visible horizon eyes.  During the five years when my children were little, I changed an average of six diapers a day, about 11,000 changes.  When they were sleeping I often gazed upon them for unrecorded amounts of time-even took pictures to preserve the peace. During the last decade, I have traveled more to places in the United States, Europe, China and South America.  I have a collection of photos taken through or leaning out windows from a cozy and comfortable hotel room.  The view out there invited me to preserve it, seemed enough for me.

Where this meandering is leading, I don't know.  I have come to learn that travel like writing is about discovery, not just of other places and people, but of self.  I have been playing it safe, staying on the shore, gazing and observing from a distance. Truth be told, I started a blog ten months ago but never published it.  Today I meandered into the public blogging world with the intention do something I love: write.  I will write with love, hope and faith in the known, unknown and unknowable, the heartful and mindful journey, to be present to self and other.  I want to embrace the muck of leg wrapping seaweed, the belly stings from the jellyfish, the many sunset shades of purple, pink, orange and red even when the clouds obscure my view.

Why now? That is no longer the question. The question is: what now?

In two weeks I will join other women who will be going to Malawi, Africa to support the mission of a nonprofit organization, VoiceFlame Writers International.  Across the sea, on another continent we will write  to connect with women through story.  With pen, pencil and paper or keyboard, I am going the distance for as long as I can breathe. Don't hold your breath, but stay tuned.